When Graham Ritchie and I were project managers at Bechtel, Graham started writing a book on project management and invited me to be his co‐author. Before Graham left to take up the post of director of the MSc in project management at Cranfield School of Management, we developed a large amount of material, probably sixty percent of the book. The reason this book has never been completed is that, after my sixteen years as a consultant lecturer at Cranfield, I realised that the material needed rewriting completely. Since my first book¹ only covered aspects of purchasing, it would probably take at least another two or three volumes to do justice to the whole subject of project management.

During Graham's short time at Cranfield, before he died suddenly of a brain tumour, he turned much of the material into lecture notes in support of the MSc programme. Naturally, when I took over from Graham, I continued to use them during my ten years as the MSc course director. Section A of Part one, Project Characteristics, Advantages and Phases has been revised and is included at the start of Part I of this book. One feature of our book was that each chapter would end with a check list covering the chapter topic. Accordingly, the check lists were also complied into a handout for the MSc students, and this forms the core of Part IV, Project Execution. This document was so useful for many of the graduates that, years later, they would write to me asking for another copy because theirs was worn out.

The popularity of the project execution check lists, and their practical application by the MSc graduates in the work environment, has been the reason for developing the original lists and taking the check list concept further.

The inclusion of the Specialist Topics is intended to extend the lists to cover subjects needed for projects of a significant size and complexity. Whereas, the Skills Check Lists have been included to cover the needs of individuals, in all circumstances, regardless of the size of the project.